Chapter Text
Remus was exhausted. The previous night’s full moon had done a number on him, as they all did, even with his potions.
But, Dumbledore had offered him a job, and a job under someone who not only knew, but accepted his lycanthropy was a godsend no member of his kind would be quick to pass up, especially not a lone wolf like himself.
Especially not since…
A strangled gasp escaped his lips and tears burned in his eyes. He hunched over, forcing himself to take a gulping breath and forcing the pain into the back of his heart, similarly locking up the memories that caused it.
He’d been doing better, really. Managing the grief had gotten easier over the years, but every once in a while it snuck back up on him.
Usually those moments meant that he would be spending at least a few hours wallowing in despair, but today he couldn’t afford that luxury.
Today, he returned to Hogwarts.
When he’d managed to pull himself together, he straightened back up, cast one final look around his childhood home (the quaint, muggle structure had been left to him in his mother’s will) and double checked that all his wards were in place. When he was satisfied, he gave a short nod and apparated to the apparition point closest to King’s Cross Station.
Dumbledore had offered to provide transportation, but he suspected there would be many things this year that would remind him of his friends that had been lost. Of his… of the man who was currently rotting away in Azkaban. (Or rather he was supposed to be. Apparently he had escaped. Remus didn’t know how he felt about that, and he purposefully hadn’t decided how he felt about his mixed feelings towards the man, even now, twelve years after the greatest betrayal anyone could have possibly made in the war. Never mind that he still had yet to tell anyone about the marauders’ biggest secret.)
He had to start getting used to it.
At the time of Dumbledore’s offer, riding the Hogwarts Express had seemed like the perfect place to start, rather than in a classroom in front of a group of his new students.
As he approached the entrance to platform 9 3/4, he pondered whether or not he’d made the right decision.
When he entered the platform, the train was already waiting, though it was still too early for parents and students to start arriving. He paused for a moment, taking in the familiar sight and letting it mix with the unfamiliar context, letting emotion wash over him and forcing himself to practice maintaining his composure.
Taking a deep breath he boarded the train, unable to stop his feet from taking the quite literal walk down memory lane and stopping in front of an all too familiar compartment.
He stood outside of it for much too long, but he wanted to take advantage of these precious moments before students started arriving.
When he finally tried to reach for the door, he found himself frozen, limbs refusing to listen to him. For the briefest moment he glanced up and down the corridor, considering the option of picking a different compartment, but he vanished the thought quicker than it came, knowing that would be even more painful than he could handle. He had only ever ridden in this exact compartment. Even before he had ever met the boys who’d changed his life, he had sat right in these very seats. And so even now, years later, after all that had changed, he absolutely refused to sit anywhere else.
It was that thought that gave him the strength to pull the door open and shuffle inside.
He quickly arranged his things on the overhead rack, knuckles brushing the dent in the wall from when James had been a bit too aggressive throwing his trunk up there in fourth year. Swallowing the lump in his throat, he gingerly lifted the cushions and slowly dragged his fingertips across the jagged “R” carved into the wood of the seat closest to the window in his second year, staunchly refusing to acknowledge the meticulous heart surrounding it. He turned to his right, taking in the slashed through “J” and the much neater “S” that had been added three years after the initial “J” had been placed there. The same year the heart had been added around his R. The same year James and Sirius had switched their usual seats so that Sirius could be closer to-
He dropped the pad and allowed the thud of it landing back against the wood to drag him back to the present before moving to the other side of the compartment. He similarly picked up that cushion and forced himself to look down at first the “P” closer to the door, and only briefly glancing at a similarly crossed out “S” which had been replaced by a slightly newer “J”.
After a moment of staring he replaced the seat cushion and stood up.
Before he could help himself, he reached out one more time and gently felt the carving on the top of the backrest behind the crossed out S.
He didn’t look to see what it said. He didn’t need to. He knew what he would find. How could he not? When the same “RL + SB” was practically carved into the walls of his heart, by the same hand that had carved it into this very seat.
Finally, he let his hand fall to his side before slowly sitting down in the same seat he’d sat in every single time he’d ever ridden this train.
A quick glance at his watch showed that he still had just under an hour before parents and students started arriving, which meant about 2 until they left. Then another 6 once the train actually left the station.
His bones ached at the thought.
“Well,” he thought to himself, slipping off his cloak and draping it over himself. “Might as well take advantage of this time to catch up on sleep.”